Encouraged by plans for and release of the papal Encyclical, they call for Eco-Social Justice

As of Noon on October 29, 2015, 425 rabbis have signed a Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis, calling for vigorous action to prevent worsening climate disruption and to seek eco-social justice. The text of the Rabbinic Letter and its signers are below.

The Rabbinic Letter was initiated by seven leading rabbis from a broad spectrum of American Jewish life: Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of the American Jewish University; Rabbi Arthur Green, rector of the Hebrew College rabbinical school; Rabbi Peter Knobel, former president, Central Conference of American Rabbis; Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, director of the Social Justice Organizing Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbininical College; Rabbi Susan Talve, spiritual leader of Central Reform Congregation, St. Louis; Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center; and Rabbi Deborah Waxman, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. They were joined by Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, a leader of the Orthodox community.

The full text and list of signers follows.

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To the Jewish People, to all Communities of Spirit,

and to the World:

A Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis

We come as Jews and rabbis with great respect for what scientists teach us – for as we understand their teaching, it is about the unfolding mystery of God’s Presence in the unfolding universe, and especially in the history and future of our planet. Although we accept scientific accounts of earth’s history, we continue to see it as God’s creation, and we celebrate the presence of the divine hand in every earthly creature.

Yet in our generation, this wonder and this beauty have been desecrated -- not in one land alone but ‘round all the Earth. So in this crisis, even as we join all Earth in celebrating the Breath of Life that interweaves us all -- –

-- You sea-monsters and all deeps, Hallelu-Yah.

Fire, hail, snow, and steam, Hallelu-Yah.

Stormy wind to do God's word, Hallelu-Yah.

Mountains high and tiny hills, Hallelu-Yah (Psalm 148)

We know all Earth needs not only the joyful human voice but also the healing human hand.

We are especially moved when the deepest, most ancient insights of Torah about healing the relationships of Earth and human earthlings, adamah and adam, are echoed in the findings of modern science.

The texts of Torah that perhaps most directly address our present crisis are Leviticus 25-26 and Deuteronomy 15. They call for one year of every seven to be Shabbat Shabbaton – a Sabbatical Year – and Shmittah – a Year of restful Release for the Earth and its workers from being made to work, and of Release for debtors from their debts.

In Leviticus 26, the Torah warns us that if we refuse to let the Earth rest, it will “rest” anyway, despite us and upon us – through drought and famine and exile that turn an entire people into refugees.

This ancient warning heard by one indigenous people in one slender land has now become a crisis of our planet as a whole and of the entire human species. Human behavior that overworks the Earth – especially the overburning of fossil fuels --- crests in a systemic planetary response that endangers human communities and many other life-forms as well.

Already we see unprecedented floods, droughts, ice-melts, snowstorms, heat waves, typhoons, sea-level rises, and the expansion of disease-bearing insects from “tropical” zones into what used to be “temperate” regions. These cxonsequences are Leviticus 26 embodied. Scientific projections of the future make clear that even worse will happen if we continue with carbon-burning business as usual.

As Jews, we ask the question whether the sources of traditional Jewish wisdom can offer guidance to our political efforts to prevent disaster and heal our relationship with the Earth. Our first and most basic wisdom is expressed in the Sh’ma and is underlined in the teaching that through Shekhinah the Divine presence dwells within as well as beyond the world. The Unity of all means not only that all life is interwoven, but also that an aspect of God’s Self partakes in the interwovenness.

We acknowledge that for centuries, the attention of our people – driven into exile not only from our original land but made refugees from most lands thereafter so that they were bereft of physical or political connection and without any specific land – has turned away from this sense of interconnection of adam and adamah, toward the repair of social injustice. Because of this history, we were so much pre-occupied with our own survival that we could not turn attention to the deeper crisis of which our tradition had always been aware.

But justice and earthiness cannot be disentangled. This is taught by our ancient texts – teaching that every seventh year be a Year of Release, Shmittah, Shabbat Shabbaton, in which there would be not only one year’s release of Earth from overwork, but also one year’s sharing by all in society of the Earth’s freely growing abundance, and one year’s release of debtors from their debts.

Indeed, we are especially aware that this very year is, according to the ancient count, the Shmita Year.

The unity of justice and Earth-healing is also taught by our experience today: The worsening inequality of wealth, income, and political power has two direct impacts on the climate crisis. On the one hand, great Carbon Corporations not only make their enormous profits from wounding the Earth, but then use these profits to purchase elections and to fund fake science to prevent the public from acting to heal the wounds. On the other hand, the poor in America and around the globe are the first and the worst to suffer from the typhoons, floods, droughts, and diseases brought on by climate chaos.

So we call for a new sense of eco-social justice – a tikkun olam that includes tikkun tevel, the healing of our planet. We urge those who have been focusing on social justice to address the climate crisis, and those who have been focusing on the climate crisis to address social justice.

Though as rabbis we are drawing on the specific practices by which our Torah makes eco-social justice possible, we recognize that in all cultures and all spiritual traditions there are teachings about the need for setting time and space aside for celebration, restfulness, reflection.

Yet in modern history, we realize that for about 200 years, the most powerful institutions and cultures of the human species have refused to let the Earth or human earthlings have time or space for rest. By overburning carbon dioxide and methane into our planet's air, we have disturbed the sacred balance in which we breathe in what the trees breathe out, and the trees breathe in what we breathe out. The upshot: global scorching, climate crisis.

The crisis is worsened by the spread of extreme extraction of fossil fuels that not only heats the planet as a whole but damages the regions directly affected.

§ Fracking shale rock for oil and “unnatural gas” poisons regional water supplies and induces the shipment of volatile explosive “bomb trains” around the country.

§ Coal burning not only imposes asthma on coal-plant neighborhoods – often the poorest and Blackest – but destroys the lovely mountains of West Virginia.

§ Extracting and pipe-lining Tar Sands threatens Native First nation communities in Canada and the USA, and endangers farmers and cowboys through whose lands the KXL Pipeline is intended to traverse..

§ Drilling for oil deep into the Gulf and the Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound off the Pacific have already brought death to workers and to sea life and financial disasters upon nearby communities. Proposed oil drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic threaten worse.

All of this is overworking Earth -- precisely what our Torah teaches we must not do. So now we must let our planet rest from overwork. For Biblical Israel, this was a central question in our relationship to the Holy One. And for us and for our children and their children, this is once again the central question of our lives and of our God. HOW? -- is the question we must answer.

So here we turn from inherited wisdom to action in our present and our future. One way of addressing our own responsibility would be for households, congregations, denominations, federations, political action --- to Move Our Money from spending that helps these modern pharaohs burn our planet to spending that helps to heal it. For example, these actions might be both practical and effective:

§ Purchasing wind-born rather than coal-fired electricity to light our homes and synagogues and community centers;

§ Organizing our great Federations to offer grants and loans to every Jewish organization in their regions to solarize their buildings;

§ Shifting our bank accounts from banks that invest in deadly carbon-burning to community banks and credit unions that invest in local neighborhoods, especially those of poor, Black, and Hispanic communities;

§ Insisting that our tax money go no longer to subsidizing enormously profitable Big Oil but instead to subsidizing the swift deployment of renewable energy -- as quickly in this emergency as our government moved in the emergency of the early 1940s to shift from manufacturing cars to making tanks.

§ Convincing our legislators to institute a system of carbon fees and public dividends that rewards our society for moving beyond the Carbon economy.

These examples are simply that, and in the days and years to come, we may think of other approaches to accomplish these ecological ends.

America is one of the most intense contributors to the climate crisis, and must therefore take special responsibility to act. Though we in America are already vulnerable to climate chaos, other countries are even more so –-- and Jewish caring must take that truth seriously. Israeli scientists, for example, report that if the world keeps doing carbon business as usual, the Negev desert will come to swallow up half the state of Israel, and sea-level rises will put much of Tel Aviv under water.

Israel itself is too small to calm the wide world’s worsening heat. Israel’s innovative ingenuity for solar and wind power could help much of the world, but it will take American and other funding to help poor nations use the new-tech renewable energy created by Israeli and American innovators.

We believe that there is both danger and hope in American society today, a danger and a hope that the American Jewish community, in concert with our sisters and brothers in other communities of Spirit, must address. The danger is that America is the largest contributor to the scorching of our planet. The hope is that over and over in our history, when our country faced the need for profound change, it has been our communities of moral commitment, religious covenant, and spiritual search that have arisen to meet the need. So it was fifty years ago during the Civil Rights movement, and so it must be today.

As we live through this Shmittah Year, we are especially aware that Torah calls for Hak’heyl -- assembling the whole community of the People Israel during the Sukkot after the Shmittah year, to hear and recommit ourselves to the Torah’s central teachings.

So we encourage Jews in all our communities to gather on the Sunday of Sukkot this year, October 4, 2015, to explore together our responsibilities toward the Earth and all humankind, in this generation.

Our ancient earthy wisdom taught that social justice, sustainable abundance, a healthy Earth, and spiritual fulfillment are inseparable. Today we must hear that teaching in a world-wide context, drawing upon our unaccustomed ability to help shape public policy in a great nation. We call upon the Jewish people to meet God’s challenge once again.

<p>I am so concerned about the Earth and its capacity to remain the home of my children and grandchildren. perhaps the leadership of all clergy from all faiths will finally show us the way to better serve God through service to this Earth.</p>

<p>Dear rabbis, Your hearts may be in the right place, but the question of climate change is not in your domain. It's a question of science, not religion. As a data scientist, I can tell you two things based on my analysis of the data: 1. there has been global warming over the last 50 years, and 2. global warming has stopped in the last 15 years. None of the so-called climate scientists predicted that halt to global warming, though now they are explaining it after the fact. Please let the scientific community debate this, and ignore Rabbi Waskow's emotional appeals. Sincerely, Morris Olitsky</p>

<p><span style="font-size: medium;">Mr. Olitsky is correct in saying that scientific estimates of global scorching are crucial, but ignores the fact that science alone cannot&nbsp; make an ethical judgment. 97% of the world’s climate scientists warn us that disastrous events and the deaths of millions will result if we continue pouring CO2 and methane into our atmosphere. But it takes religiously rooted and other ethically rooted activists to turn those predictions into social change, to save those lives. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">That is why the Pope and 360 rabbis have issued religiously rooted calls for action.That is why the Rabbinic</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">Letter in its first paragraphs affirms the science and locates in an understanding of God's living presence in the world. That is why my own understanding of God draws upon the "YHWH" Name as a breath (try pronuncing it with no vowels)</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">and hears it ass the Breath of Life-- what we breathe in is what the trees breathe out, and what the tres breathe inis what we breathe out. That interbreathing of Oxygen &amp; CO2 is what the burning of fossil fuels has ruined. The climate crisis is a crisis in God's Name &amp; Presence</span>.</p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Mr.&nbsp;Olitsky's&nbsp; contempt for the Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis goes hand in hand with his assertion that the last 15 years have been a time of global cooling. I wish it were so. Unfortunately, it is entirely untrue.&nbsp; The most cautious estimates of global heat build-up &nbsp;are as follows:</span></p><p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">&nbsp;“The key findings are:</span></p><p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">&nbsp;“1. The global surface temperature average (land and sea) for 2014 was nominally the warmest since the global instrumental record began in 1850; however, within the margin of error, it is tied with 2005 and 2010 and so we can’t be certain it set a new record.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“2. For the land, 2014 was nominally the 4th warmest year since 1753 (when the land surface temperature record began).</span></p><p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“3. For the sea, 2014 was the warmest year on record since 1850.”</span></p><p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">&nbsp;&lt;http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/Global-Warming-2014-Berkeley-Earth-Newsletter.pdf&gt; :</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">As for the existence of about 3% of climate scientists who reject the evidence of climate crisis: a series of articles in the NY Times show that a number of these have been heavily subsidized by such Big Oil “Carbon Pharaohs” as the Koch Brothers, and have failed to report these conflicts of interest in submitting their findings.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The behavior of Big Tobacco in funding some scientists who would testify tobacco was not a problem has been imitated by Big Oil.&nbsp; See these articles:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">&lt; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html</a>&gt; <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">&lt;http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/03/10/us/politics/ap-us-koch-industries-climate-science.html&gt;</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">&lt;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/naomi-oreskes-a-lightning-rod-in-a-changing-climate.html?rref=homepage&amp;module=Ribbon&amp;version=origin&amp;region=Header&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=Home%20Page&amp;pgtype=article">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/naomi-oreskes-a-lightning-rod-in-a-changing-climate.html?rref=homepage&amp;module=Ribbon&amp;version=origin&amp;region=Header&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=Home%20Page&amp;pgtype=article</a>&gt;</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">&lt;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/playing-dumb-on-climate-change.html?action=click&amp;contentCollection=Science&amp;module=RelatedCoverage&amp;region=Marginalia&amp;pgtype=article">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/playing-dumb-on-climate-change.html?action=click&amp;contentCollection=Science&amp;module=RelatedCoverage&amp;region=Marginalia&amp;pgtype=article</a>&gt;</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">&nbsp;I welcome all of us to <strong>act</strong> in accord with the Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Shalom, Rabbi Arthur Waskow</span></p>

<p>I've been working in the field of sustainability for 20 years, and I am so encouraged to see faith based leaders taking a position in the debate. My experience is that we must move faster, and that reminding humanity of our moral obligation to respect the beauty of the creator is just what we need.</p>

I have come upon this a year and a half late, but I am heartened to see our religious leaders taking a stand to protect our planet. All of the man-made causes listed here are indeed contributing to the demise of fresh air, clean waterways, safe oceans, and the flora and fauna. However, there is another very large factor that is a global threat to the earth and earth's atmosphere - and that is the practice of Geoengineering, Solar Radiation Management, HAARP. These cause sunlight to be reflected back up into the atmosphere, which in turn makes the sun hotter. The earth cannot cool overnight as the thick layer of chemical laden "clouds" traps in the heat which then keeps our earth hot. If you are interested, please only google credible resources. There are some very sketchy sites out there that do not reliably, nor credibly, explain this practice with an educated mind-set. Again, I am grateful that the community of religious leaders is taking such a strong interest in the future of our planet, Mother Earth.

As a congregant and member of the Investment Committee of one of the signatory congregations, as well as a sustainable investing professional, I'm very pleased and proud to see this letter. It is meaningful that a position on climate change exists at all; the fact that it is so well articulated and both spiritual and action-orientated gives it immense power. Thank you!

As a research scientist, I applaud the efforts of stalwarts in the scientific community like Nobel prize recipient Arrhenius working in the 19th Century,
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius
climatologist Dr. James Hansen(Storms of My Grandchildren) and environmentalist Bill McKibben (founder 350.0rg), Union of Concerned Scientists of which I am a member, to implement policies addressing climate change. Gratitude to the late Professor Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
https://www.scu.edu/environmental-ethics/environmental-activists-heroes-and-martyrs/carl-sagan.html
on linking the fate of Planet Earth to mitigation of climate change and who pointed out the lesson extracted from nearby runaway greenhouse Planet Venus is acknowledged.
So too is former VP and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Al Gore( Inconvenient Truth, Climate Reality Project)
https://www.climaterealityproject.org/win-signed-copy-former-us-vice-president-gores-book-4?segment=search_AIS_092018&gclid=CjwKCAjwio3dBRAqEiwAHWsNVYgRf0QENj-1Br9KMbv_soxFKN28fkk_NIds-Hed9aneATV57_3ZbhoCHfgQAvD_BwE
.Former President and Nobel Prize for Peace Recipient Barack Obama deserves special credit for making climate change mitigation codified in efforts to phase out fossil fuels and convert to carbon neutral renewable energy one key policy of his administration. Our current domestic political impasse stateside focuses largely on preventing the current administration from negating all earlier stateside efforts and destroying international cohesion on this existential issue for all Earth's creatures.
In the Republican Party, the former six term Senator from Indiana Richard Lugar supported and championed such efforts.
https://thinkprogress.org/defeated-by-tea-party-sen-lugar-warns-republicans-cannot-admit-to-any-nuance-in-policy-on-climate-1c4656d1dd8e/
https://www.feedthefuture.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ftf_remarks_lugar_may2014.pdf
The latter presentation displays how his thinking on climate change evolved.
A research center in Indiana focused on the environment and climate change linked to the Purdue/University of Indiana Campuses is named after him.
http://www.lugarenergycenter.org/
Last year 2017, I served for seven months as PI(Principle Scientific Investigator) for a start up spun off from the Lugar Center. That work focused on a NSF (National Science Foundation) funded project to fabricate and commercialize hydrogen storage in a light mass solid state receptacle. Success in this effort, admittedly still not realized,could assist transition from gasoline fueled cars and in aviation to operation of fuel cells and appreciably cut down on greenhouse gas emissions destabilizing the climate. Hydrogen storage, understandably can only be regarded as one component in a required portfolio of renewable energy technology. Such transformation requires a Manhattan Project level effort
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/bill-gates-calls-for-manhattan-project-style-renewable-energy-drive-10346752.html
http://worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reports/wff-energy.htm
not currently on the visible horizon.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1648748
I also note the courage displayed in the EU (European Union) particularly President Obama's trusted colleague German Chancellor Merkel (Ph.D Physics)
in providing leadership on this existential issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eN2VCRagiM
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/angela-merkel-says-climate-change-is-a-fact-laments-u-s-stance
In that context historically, one most controversial 19th Century figure in German history, Richard Wagner. warned implicitly about climate degradation and environmental decay in his Nibelungen Ring Cycle. I have viewed thirty times the complete Nibelungen Ring Cycle
https://www.theguardian.com/arts/fridayreview/story/0,,1359272,00.html
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=01-P13-00029&segmentID=3
http://jewishjournal.com/cover_story/68736/
http://jewishjournal.com/culture/music/78198/
Das Rheingold initial part can be viewed here as extracting through greed and forsaking union with the Earth to instead exploit its resources for personal gain( The Nibelungen Zwerg(dwarf) Alberich cursing love and purloining sacred gold from the depth of the Rhine which supposedly destroyed world harmony.) In the prelude to the conclusion of the Ring: Gotterdaemmerung , as the Earth daughters spun the web of fate ,they noted how in eons past a God (Wotan) wandered the Earth in search of great knowledge and encountered in the equivalent of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge-Weltesche.This God broke off a branch and transformed in into a spear and carved in its shaft runes which enabled him to win the World. That act led to creation of civilization. However, that "rape" of Nature
antecedent to the Nibelungen Zwerg Alberich cursing love in Rheingold and plundering Earth's resources caused the spring which nurtured the Weltesche to slowly dry up. Only at the end of the drama as the "Maenner" come to realize the fate of Nature and the acute need for restoration of World Harmony-climate change mitigation and preservation of the environment. In Judaism we term this restoration Tikkun Olam. The Nibelungen Ring,despite its Nordic overtones, and perverse adaption in the Third Reich, is pure Torah and a powerful tool to assist the true heroes of the Ring - "Maenner" of our generation- preserve climate resiliency and repair the World.
Possibly the "Maenner " today are the religious faith leaders
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/757/Caring_for_creation_investigating_faith_based_environmentalism.pdf?sequence=6
like Pope Frances (Ladeto Si), his appointee Cardinal Blase Cupich Head of Chicago Archdiocese,
https://www.spertus.edu/programs-events/bernardin-2016
Scientist and Archbishop Lutheran Church of Sweden Rev.Dr. Antje Jackelin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antje_Jackel%C3%A9n
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/pope-francis-antje-jackelen_n_7234098.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
former administration Zygon Center for Science and Religion Chicago(well known to me), Rabbi Arthur Waskow Shalom Center , and Emeritus Rabbi Herbert Bronstein North Shore Congregation Israel Glencoe
https://www.nsci.org/rabbi-herbert-bronstein.html
https://www.juf.org/news/world.aspx?id=14744
http://www.jewishvaluesonline.org/rabbi.php?id=94
and past member Department of Religion Lake Forest College, and Zygon Center participant, and my best friend electrical engineer and Daughter of Iran Samaneh Ahmadi from the Shiite Muslim Faith Community.
The Interfaith Community partnership on this issue can possibly redirect humankind towards climate preservation rather than its destruction. However the continued presence of Alberich at the end of the Ring lurking in the background indicates there is no guarantee.That presence I view now as Jewish icing on the Jewish cake reminiscent of a verse from the Book of Deuteronomy about potential selection of alternate pathways for good or evil
Concluding, as a member High Tech Division Jewish Federation of Chicago,I note this Rabbinical Climate Manifesto targets the Jewish Federations of North America. For over five years without success,I have raised at annual meetings a request to integrate climate change mitigating into core programming.The response so far has been the equivalent of Pharaoh's response to Moses who requested Let my People Go
Submitted,
Dr. R.A. Rosenstein
Chicago,IL

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